


It Was Spring For A While

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 05:10:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10379229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: Amos acquires a new possession.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This refers, very tangentially, to Amos' backstory, but doesn't get into warnings territory. Feel free to email/ask on tumblr if I'm incorrect in that. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, though inspired by conversation with the lovely joatamon. Title from Billie Holiday. Dontsleepsharks at tumblr and gmail.

Amos doesn't keep secrets. Or, well, that isn't entirely true. Amos doesn't lie, exactly, but he didn't tell the whole truth, either, when it's inconvenient or when it pleases him not to.

Maybe a more correct statement was that Amos didn't keep secrets from _Alex_. That’s closer to right.

He doesn't keep secrets, except for whatever he's doing now. He isn't hiding it, exactly, when he dumps some water - not from the potable tap - into a sealed container, but he does enough sleight of hand that Holden and Naomi either don't notice or are just attributing it to his general Amos-ness, a collection of little habits acquired somewhere between Baltimore and the Belt.

He aligns the container behind one thick forearm, enough so that it's concealed unless you know to look at him. For a big guy, Amos trades in _not_ being looked at almost as much as he needs to intimidate. It’s a little absurd - don't notice the guy the size of a refrigeration unit in the coveralls - but maybe it’s because it’s been so long since Alex hasn’t noticed him.

Whatever he's doing is time-sensitive enough that he high-tails out of the galley and into the hall, probably going to his rack to ... deliver a container of water he can't drink. He doesn't give a backward glance, neck stiff and face aimed at the hallway before him, purposefully enough that Alex can tell that he's listening for anyone following him.

Alex waits, one, two, three, like he's playing 'stealth and search' with his children. He follows.

Amos generally keeps the door to his rack open - something about not liking confined spaces, and if Alex were a psychologist and not a pilot, he'd have a field day with whatever goes on in Amos' brain. The door is closed, though, and it occurs to Alex that he doesn't have the code to open it.

He doesn't need to, because it snicks open before he can raise his hand to knock.

"You followed me," Amos says, like they don't spend large amounts of their days following each other around. Like the Roci, despite her size, doesn't make for tight quarters.

Amos doesn't lie to Alex, not generally, and Alex has made it a policy to lie to each of them as little as possible, though he finds that a harder task with Holden and Naomi. They're more complicated than Amos or simpler, perhaps. He hasn't decided which.

"Yes," he says, simply. "I followed you."

Amos shrugs and then gestures for Alex to follow him in. Amos isn't neat, and he isn't sloppy. Whatever personal effects each of them has - Miller and his beads, Holden and pictures of his parents - he lacks. But the place isn't spartan either, just strewn with enough stuff that you can tell someone lives there but not more than it would take to stuff in a duffle, either.

Amos once told him, when Alex was drunk and Amos wasn't, that he didn't like having more than a trash bag's worth of stuff, and Alex had paused and contemplated the life you had to lead to measure your possessions in trash-bag units. 

There are clothes, a few tools, what Alex recognizes as Amos' second favorite pair of goggles, a too-large shirt that Alex had given him slung over the back of a chair.

And a plant.

It's a little green nothing of a plant, small enough that Amos had either just gotten it or had dragged it around the system and stunted its growth. Alex is Martian - he doesn't know shit about plants if you can't eat 'em or make 'em into something, and even then he doesn't know much about those. It's nothing Alex recognizes, its leaves slightly furred, stem heavy with the beginning of what looks like a flower bud.

And Amos is there, looking slightly - not ashamed, because Alex has known him long enough that Amos doesn't really do shame, not really, not over something like this. He does regret, if he thinks he fucked something up; he does anger - too much anger, like his anger grows to fill the size of his body - but he doesn't do shame.

He is, Alex realizes, nervous.

"I tried giving it the drinking water, but it didn't seem to like it," Amos says. "I think they take out minerals or whatever I'm supposed to be giving it."

"Yeah," Alex says. "They build up. Clog the lines."

"Makes sense," Amos says, like he'd never thought about why he hadn't had to flush a potable water line before, and maybe he hasn't - that's Amos to core, fixing whatever needs to be fixed but not considering why things don't break in the first place. Like anything normal and unbroken is foreign to him.

"What kind of plant is it?"

"The guy said it was an African violet. Like from Earth," Amos says. "Probably lying."

"You never saw one?" Alex asks, before he can stop himself. But he knows the answer, and sees that tiny flick of something in Amos' eyes. No, of course he wouldn't have. Amos' upbringing, such as it was, wouldn't have had many plants in it and certainly not ornamental flowers.

"No," Amos says, and then, "I'm just trying to keep it alive, but I guess I'm not that good at it."

"Seems alive enough to me," Alex says. "I mean, it's not dead yet, right?" He goes and reaches out a hand, running one finger over a leaf. It's fuzzy, soft, with the occasional stiffer hair that could function as protection, maybe, against something smaller and less dangerous than humans. "It's nice."

"There's prickers," Amos says, and reaches out a hand to cover Alex's, like he's going to be injured by this small, scraggly plant, and not the sucking vacuum of space around them or whatever Holden's next bad decision is.

"I'll be OK, Amos," Alex says, and removes his hand, from the plant, carefully laying it on the tabletop but not making any move to shake Amos' hand off.

Amos has the hands of a mechanic, of a brawler, rough and callused, and Alex knows he doesn't have much sensation in his knuckles, not really, but that doesn't stop him from bringing his thumb up to rub across them, as careful as he had been with the plant.

"It's a nice plant," Alex says. "You'll take good care of it."

"Yeah?" Amos asks.

"Yeah," Alex says. "You're good to the things you care about."

A smile tugs at the corner of Amos' mouth, imperceptible, maybe, to someone who doesn't know him as well as Alex does. "I'm trying to be," he says. "You gonna help me?"

"With the plant?" he asks, though he's doubtful he can keep a plant alive any more than Amos can.

"Sure," Amos says, and he squeezes Alex's hand before releasing it, once, not hard enough to hurt but enough that Alex isn't imagining it. "With the plant."

"Of course," Alex says, and smiles when Amos' mouth widens into a grin.


End file.
